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MEMORIAL DAY ORATION 



OF 



William H. Lambert 



ARLINGTON VA. 



1883 



With Complrments of 



WILLIAM H. LAJVI^BE^RT, 



Brevet Major L '. S. I ". 



MUTUAL LIFE BUILDING. 
Philadelphia. 




MEMORIAL DAY 



ORATION 



OF 

WILLIAM h!' LAMBERT 



NATIONAL CEMETERY 
ARLINGTON VA. 

May 30 1883 



PHILADELPHIA \; ' 

188.^ 



ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE COPIES PRINTED 
FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 



QHANT, FAIRES Si ROOQERS, 

PRINTERS, 

62 & S4 NORTH SIXTH STREET, 

PHILA3ELPHIA. 



^«^'^ 

7^-^^ 



OR A TION. 



To COMMEMORATE the great deliverance which 
the Lord wrought for His chosen people, He 
ordained a ceremonial to be observed by all their 
generations forever. 

Lest the memorial should deteriorate into a 
meaningless form, He commanded the father to 
shew the son, saying, "This is done because of 
that which the Lord did unto me when I came 
forth out of Egypt." 

We are to-day assembled to commemorate our 
Nation's dead, and though neither antiquity nor 
divine command hallows our ceremonial, surely 
when our sons ask, "What mean ye by this ser- 
vice ?" we may say, this is done because the strong 
hand of the Lord wrought for our people a mighty 
deliverance. 

The consequences of the War of the Rebellion 
so far exceeded the purposes and the hopes which 
we cherished at its outbreak, that in these later 
years we are disposed to consider its results as 
the object for which the war was undertaken. 



4 Memorial Day Oration. 

The remote causes of the war were doubtless 
beyond the control of the generation which wit- 
nessed the strife. Whatever these remote causes 
may have been, whether the diverse climatic influ- 
ences prevalent in the North and the South, or 
the opposing characteristics of the early settlers 
of the two sections, or the antagonistic views rela- 
tive to the rights of the States, or more directly 
the conflicting systems of free and slave labor, the 
occasion of the war was the election of Abraham 
Lincoln to the Presidency, and the immediate 
cause was the determination of our people, irre- 
spective of party, to maintain the union of the 
States. 

The election of a President by a party whose 
main principle was opposition to the encroach- 
ment of slavery, and whose success indicated the 
lessening of the over-masterina- influence which 
had hitherto been exerted by the slaveholding 
States, was rendered possible by the increasing 
antagonism to slavery itself. But whilst that 
party was united in that all its members were 
opposed to slavery and were agreed in resistance 
to the extension of that institution into new terri- 
tory, they differed widely in their opinions con- 
cerning other methods of preventing its growth. 
There were those in the Republican party who 
favored warring upon slavery, regardless of con- 



Memorial Day Oration. 5 

stitutional restriction, but the vast majority of its 
members, whilst beHeving slavery to be a great 
evil whose suppression was eminently desirable, 
recognized the provisions which forbade any in- 
terference with it within the limits of States 
already existent, and hoped for nothing more 
than the prevention of its spread into States yet 
to be formed. 

Believing freedom to be national and slavery 
sectional, the Republican party had yet neither 
desire nor intention to violate, in the slightest 
degree, the rights of the slaveholding States. 

Innocent of all purpose to infringe the rights, 
whether inherent or constitutional, of any of the 
States, the people of the North were loath to 
believe that a political victory won in strict accord 
with the Constitution and laws of the land, was 
to form a pretext to justify withdrawal from the 
Union, and were slow to realize that the Nation was 
on the verg^e either of dissolution or of civil war. 

As doubt resolved into fear and fear strength- 
ened into certainty, as the terrible reality was 
apprehended, the anxiety of the North to prevent 
the threatened calamity was manifested by pro- 
posals bordering upon humiliation. So earnest 
was our purpose to avoid strife that we were 
willing to yield anything, save the fundamental 
principles which had triumphed in the recent elec- 



6 Memorial Day Oration. 

tion. Propositions of the most liberal character, 
declarations to maintain the Constitution inviolate, 
guarantees that there should be no interference 
with slavery within the States, were alike rejected 
by the South as insufficient, and it was evident 
that naught save our abject submission would 
satisfy the imperious demands of the leaders who 
had determined upon the disruption of the Union. 

'Mid blackness of darkness the Nation was 
driftinof to war or to death. 

When the shock could no longer be averted, 
and the impending storm burst upon the land, 
the call to arms v/as not an elaborate argument 
upon the unconstitutionality of secession, not a 
philosophical disquisition concerning State rights, 
not even an indignant denunciation of slavery, 
but an appeal to stand by the flag. 

Many of us believed that Northern extremists 
were alike blamable with those of the South for 
the fearful peril which threatened the land ; many 
of us hoped against hope for a peaceful solution 
of our difficulties ; we differed greatly respecting 
the policy to be pursued towards the disloyal 
States; but the shot on Sumter declared specu- 
lation as to the measure of responsibility to be 
useless, proved the futility of our hopes of peace, 
banished political differences, and made ready a 
people to answer the Government's call. 



Memorial Day Oration. 7 

We staid not for questions, we waited not to 
consider the consequences of war, the authority 
of the Nation had been defied, its flag- had been 
insulted, and to uphold the honor of that flag, 
to enforce the authority of the Nation, was an 
all-sufficient purpose, and for that we entered 
the war. 

The long years of the war were crowded with 
stirring events. Our faces were oft illumined by 
the glow of victory, our hearts often beat fast in 
the assurance of ultimate triumph, hope never 
failed us even in the darkest hours, often, indeed, 
we trod the valley of humiliation, but always to 
emerge upon heights of promise ; but not the 
proudest and most joyous memories of the war 
can overshadow the enthusiasm, the gladness, and 
the pride of the early days that witnessed the 
great uprising. 

Our people sprang to arms, not for conquest, 
not to subvert the Constitution, not to propagate 
the principles of party, not to accomplish moral 
reform, not to abolish slavery — that curse of the 
land, that disgrace of the century — but to pre- 
serve the Republic. 

Doubtless there were many in our ranks who 
knew that to assert National authority was to 
cripple slavery, many who entered the service as 
upon a crusade for freedom whose final issue 



8 Memorial Day Oration. 

must be the abolition of slavery, many who 
desired the war to cease only when that result 
had been attained, but the purpose which ani- 
mated our armies and which had called them into 
beino- was the maintenance of "the Union and the 
Constitution, and the Enforcement of the Laws." 

Had the political organization whose principles 
were enunciated in these words succeeded in the 
recent election, it could not have adhered more 
closely to these principles than did the new 
administration. 

To save the Union was the single purpose of the 
people, the controlling policy of the Government. 

But in the providence of God, another issue 
than the simple maintenance of the Union was 
projected into the war, and slavery, because identi- 
fied with treason, its principle and its stay, was 
doomed to stand or fall as our arms were defeated 
or victorious. 

What statesmen had prophesied, what ourselves 
had surmised, we learned in the hard school of 
war, — the perpetuity of the Union could be 
secured only through freedom to the slave. 

Honest doubts and misgivings prompted some 
of our number to turn back, but the great host in 
arms to preserve the Nation felt that the cause 
was not less worthy because freedom was involved 
in the victory. 



Memorial Day Oration. 9 

The war ended with every purpose for which it 
was waged accompHshed, no organized opposi- 
tion to the Government existed on the face of the 
continent, the flag waved in triumph over every 
State of the Union, and four milHons of slaves 
were freed men. 

All that the army had undertaken it had done, 
its work was finished, and the exultant legions 
were summoned to the Capital only that in grand 
review they might signalize the victory ere they 
passed into history. None feared that the troops 
who in war had maintained the national authority 
would, in the pride of their power, usurp that 
authority in peace. Our citizen soldiers, without 
thought of other purpose, and simply as matter 
of course, returned to the homes whence they 
came. 

History again repeated itself, and as peacefully 
as the army of the Revolution had disbanded 
when its work was done, so melted away the 
mightier army which had crushed the Rebellion. 

Important events have often sprung from ap- 
parendy insignificant causes, great historic changes 
have often had seemingly inadequate origin, but 
the means throuorh which these momentous results 
were achieved were commensurate. Our freedom 
was bought with an adequate price. How stu- 
pendous were the means employed, the graves 



lo Memorial Day Oration. 

which are decorated to-day throughout the land, 
by their very numbers attest, but how tremendous 
was the cost, these graves can only suggest. 

So inestimable a victory demanded an infinite 
sacrifice. 

The triumph was not alone for our country or 
for our generation, but for all lands and for all 
time. The struggle was not merely to determine 
the existence of this " Nation conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
were created equal," but whether " any nation so 
conceived and dedicated" could "loner endure." 
In this Nation the experiment of self-government 
had been tried under exceptionally favorable con- 
ditions, had it failed, "government by the people" 
might well have perished from the earth. 

The task which the close of the war imposed 
upon the Government was of extraordinary diffi- 
culty, and was made all the harder because the 
great President had been stricken to death, and 
the administration devolved upon one whose mis- 
fortune it was to excite the distrust of the majority 
of the people who had sustained the war, and to 
become involved in angry controversy with a co- 
ordinate branch of the Government. 

Complete as were the achievements of our 
arms, the opinions of the defeated people were 
not changed, — no war ever has accomplished such 



Memorial Day Oration. 1 1 

result. Nor was it to be expected that men who 
had upheld their cause so bravely and at such 
immense cost as did they, would acknowledge 
themselves in error because they had been de- 
feated. Assuredly we should not have doubted 
the rig-hteousness of our cause even though it 
had ended in disaster. 

Remembering- that during the trying years of 
the reconstruction — years when of all others, har- 
mony of purpose was essential to the welfare of 
the Nation — the President and Concrress differed 
radically in their plans for restoring the lately 
rebellious States to their normal position in the 
Union, and that this difference exerted a baleful 
influence throughout the South and encouraged 
the leaders of the Rebellion to hope that through 
diversity of opinion in the North they might to 
some degree change, if not indeed reverse, some 
of the issues of the war ; rememberino- that the 
men charged with authority in the South, repre- 
sentatives of the Government so lately an enemy, 
were not always competent to the discharge of 
their delicate trust ; it is not astonishing that out- 
rasfe and wrona- characterized the transitional 
period which followed the war. 

Remembering also that the war had resulted 
not only in the defeat of the armies of the insur- 
gents, but in the utter destruction of the institu- 



1 2 Memorial Day Oration. 

tion for whose protection they had undertaken the 
war, and that it had revolutionized the social sys- 
tem of the South, it is not surprising that the 
process of accommodation to the changed circum- 
stances was slow. Evils, the growth of centuries, 
are not easily uprooted, inborn prejudices are not 
easily overcome, it is, therefore, not wonderful 
that the Southern people have been slow to adapt 
themselves to the radical changes which followed 
their defeat. Nor is it strange that the master 
frets and chafes under an order of society in 
which his former slave is politically his peer. 

The wounds inflicted by a contest of such mag- 
nitude and bitterness were naturally slow to heal. 

But Time, supplementing the war, has also 
wrought great change, and though lawlessness 
and wrong may not yet have entirely ceased, 
though the weak may not yet be wholly freed 
from oppression, the Southern States secure in 
the possession of their constitutional rights, shar- 
ing the prosperity of the country they strove to 
destroy, are at peace, and the greater part of their 
citizens honestly acquiescent in the result of war. 

Though during the war, despite many discour- 
agements, we never lost faith in our ability to 
defeat the Confederate armies and to enforce 
obedience to law, we yet feared that to main- 
tain the national authority in the South would 



Memorial Day Oration. 1 3 

require the constant presence of the national 
armies. And as if to confirm our fears the 
rebel leaders persistently declared that though 
we might overrun and desolate their territory, 
we could never restore the seceding States to 
their former relation. Whilst citizens of foreign 
lands, either sympathizing with the Confederacy, 
or calmly indifferent to the issue of the great 
contest, assumed the dissolution of the Federal 
Union to have been already consummated, assert- 
ing that a voluntary compact once broken could 
not be restored by force of arms. 

We have lived to behold the Groundlessness of 
our fear, the practical retraction of rebel declara- 
tion, and the gratuitousness of foreign assumption. 
For whatever of excuse there may have been for 
the fear, however honest and sincere the declara- 
tion, however theoretically correct the assumption, 
the facts disprove them all. To-day, twenty-seven 
thousand men constitute the army of the United 
States ; of these, five hundred garrison, the forts 
and arsenals of the South, to repossess which the 
Government had called into service two millions 
of men. 

The Federal Union was indeed maintained by 
force of arms, but it exists to-day, not upheld by 
the bayonets of an army, but by die will of a 
united people. 



1 4 Memorial Day Oration. 

The stability of our governmental system had 
not only been tried in battle, but in peace was to 
be subjected to tests scarcely less severe than 
those of war. Battle ordeal and peaceful test 
alike proved the staying powers of the Republic. 

The ship of State had not weathered the ter- 
rible storm only to founder in smoother waters 
'neath lesser gales. 

The Nation which had so successfully endured 
the great war was to withstand the reaction which 
followed cessation of hostilities, when party ties 
which had weakened and sundered under stress 
of the common peril, renewed their strength ; 
when the people who had united against a com- 
mon foe, separated upon questions of policy 
whereon opinions might differ without disloyalty to 
the Government ; and when party fealty resumed 
its sway and political strife regained the import- 
ance of which it had been so long deprived by war. 

At the height of political contention, and by rea- 
son of it, the Nation was brought to face an emer- 
gency of such character that in any land and at 
any time it would have excited the gravest appre- 
hensions, but which was indeed appalling in our 
land, so recently come forth from a terrible civil 
war, and with a legislature whose membership 
included many who in that war had been arrayed 
against the Nation. Well might thoughtful men 



Memorial Day Oration. i 5 

tremble for the safety of a Government so tried 
and tested. But to the honor of our people the 
momentous question was submitted to arbitrators 
chosen from among our own countrymen, and 
their decision was obeyed, though at least a moiety 
of our citizens believed it unjust. And the Presi- 
dent whose election was questioned, was held to 
have a perfect title because it was awarded him 
by a lawfully appointed tribunal, and he was 
obeyed as loyally, North and South, as though he 
had entered his high office upborne by an un- 
doubted popular majority. 

And when for the second time in our history 
and in our own generation, an assassin struck 
down the Chief Mao-istrate, a condition of affairs 
existed, fraught with possibilities more dangerous 
than occurrences which had overturned more than 
one European government. 

The anxieties and sorrows of those months 
when a Nation was waiting and watching by the 
bedside of the illustrious sufferer are yet vivid in 
our memories. Among the watchers by the bed- 
side, among the mourners at the grave of the 
President, were the people of the States so lately 
in rebellion. 

And we should thank God that the loyalty and 
common sense of the whole people stayed and 
upheld the Government during those months when 



1 6 Memorial Day Oratio7i. 

there was raised a gravely important question of 
administration for whose solution no precedent 
existed, and when by an unparalleled combination 
of events but one life Intervened between order 
and technical anarchy. 

The ground on which we now stand, over which 
the flag of the United States floats, not merely in 
recognition of this day and In respect to these 
dead, but in token of ownership by the Govern- 
ment, is held to-day by title different from that of 
one year ago. By the decree of our highest civil 
tribunal* a title which we had believed to be abso- 
lute, because created by war and confirmed by 
victory and vested in a Sovereignty incapable of 
being sued in its own courts, except by its own 
consent, has been invalidated, and conceding the 
authority of the decree, the Government has per- 
fected its ownership by purchase. 

It would ill become your speaker, nay it would 
be height of presumption, to gainsay a decision 
rendered by so august a tribunal as the Supreme 
Court of the United States. Nor would he, even 
were this the fitting place and occasion, ques- 
tion the righteousness of the judgment that this 
property had been wrongfully exposed for sale. 



* United States vs. Lee, i Sup. Ct. Reporter 240. Miller, J., delivering 
the opinion of ihc Couit, and Wai e, C. J., and Bradley, Woods and Gray, 
J. J., dissenting. 



Memorial Day Oration. 1 7 

but waiving consideration of the manner in which 
it came into possession of the Government, it is 
difficult for the non-legal mind to comprehend the 
nicety of the reasoning by which a suit that 
could not lie against the sovereign Nation, could 
lie against the Nation's officers who in obedience 
to its commands held the property for its sole and 
direct use, as the resting place of the dead who 
fell in the conflict which determined the existence 
and the Sovereignty of the Nation. 

I refer to this change in the title, simply because 
it furnishes another evidence of the reign of law 
in the land so lately torn by gigantic civil strife. 
That, for even a moment, the title to Arlington 
could revert to one who himself sought to destroy 
the Government, and is son of him to whom, more 
than to any other, the Confederacy owed its pro- 
longation, was an idea so repugnant to our sense 
of fitness and justice, as to be impossible of toler- 
ation ; but that the title did so pass and that 
there was no outbreak of indignant protest 
throughout the country is additional proof of our 
respect for law and for the rights, even of those 
whom we once thougrht had forfeited all rieht to 
life and property. 

Perhaps, however, it was not alone respect for 
law that allowed the title to this cemetery to 
revert to its original owner, without active oppo- 



1 8 Memorial Day Oration. 

sition, but, as well, the consciousness of our people 
that the passage of title was merely upon paper, 
that there was no clanger that the plough would 
"turn its furrow" here, that no writ would run 
against the occupants of these graves, and that 
no administration could waive because of any- 
cost the Nation's right of eminent domain. 

We rejoice that we are here to-day by no 
man's sufferance, that the Government holds this 
property by a title which none can question, and 
that no dispute can again disturb these dead. 

May their rest remain unbroken until the hour 
Cometh when " the dead shall hear the voice of 
the Son of God." May He grant that when that 
voice sounds, they that sleep in these graves shall 
hear and live. 

Surely, the Union is real — the States are indeed 
United — which can suppress a rebellion, the most 
formidable in history ; which, upon the close of 
that rebellion, and again widiin half a generation 
thereafter, can endure without shock, other than 
that of intensest grief, a transfer of administra- 
tion enforced by assassination ; which can peace- 
fully determine a disputed succession to the Chief 
Magistracy ; which can abide the decision of civil 
tribunals in controversies resulting from the war, 
even when those decisions are adverse to the 
sentiment for which men died, and that triumphed 



Memorial Day Oration. 1 9 

in that war; which can admit to the national leg- 
islature and to active participation in affairs of 
state, men who but a few years ago were in armed 
array against the Government ; and which main- 
tained in war by the courage anci devotion of its 
citizens, in peace rests upon their patriotic obedi- 
ence to law, 

" Such is the Nation on behalf of which these 
citizens, resolved that it should not be wrested 
from them, have nobly fought and died." They 
need no higher eulogy. 

The war being over, the new order of things 
being accepted, peace prevailing throughout the 
land, why cherish the memories of the terrible 
strife ? why continue an observance which recalls 
the scenes of those eventful years ? 

The passions and bitterness of the war-time are 
indeed past, and we are not gathered to awaken 
those bitter memories, or to rekindle those venge- 
ful passions, or over these graves to swear eternal 
hate to our former enemies, but only to strew 
flowers — emblems of peace and love — over the 
resting place of our dead. 

We do not recount their deeds that we may 
exult over their defeated adversaries, but only 
that we may justly appreciate the devotion to 
which these graves bear witness. 



20 Memorial Day Oration. 

Israel was bidcjen to commemorate the great 
deliverance, not that the Egyptian should be hated, 
but that the Lord should be remembered. 

Themselves the heirs of all the ages our bro- 
thers were inspired by the glories of the past to 
noble emulation, and their deeds shall enhance 
the heritage of the aofes to come. 

Justice to the dead and duty to posterity alike 
demand that we transmit the glorious story untar- 
nished and undimmed. 

In the hour of its greatest peril these men gave 
their lives for the life of the Nation, the sacrifice 
shall not be forgotten because the danger which 
demanded it was by it averted. 

Into the wide chasm which opened throughout 
our land, threatening to destroy the State unless 
into the yawning depths was cast the choicest 
treasure of the Nation, there leaped four hundred 
thousand men — themselves the most precious pos- 
session of the Republic. The bloody chasm closed 
— God grant that it shall never reopen — but we 
shall richly deserve to stand again upon its awful 
brink if we forget them, our bravest and our best. 

Rejoicing that our dead have not died in vain ; 
believing it our duty, we esteem it our privilege, 
to commemorate their sacrifice; and we to-day by 
these simple ceremonies declare both the right- 
eousness of the cause and the gratitude of the 
Nation. 



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